Communications system requirements vary widely from company to company. Now companies that virtualize their premises-based IP phone systems in private clouds can realize significant total cost of ownership savings from the ability to mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances. Virtualized IP phone systems result in increased system reliability and scalability for businesses as they grow and evolve.

Organizations now have the choice to have certain applications, such as call control and collaboration and system administration, installed either on physical or virtual servers or a customized mix of both residing in a centralized data center or elsewhere in the network. With a mix-and-match approach, customers can further consolidate existing servers, conserve hardware costs and lower maintenance costs. If the IP phone system is already built on a distributed architecture with N+1 redundancy, companies can also increase security using backup virtual servers.

ShoreTel delivers greater flexibility for customers, with the ability to mix and match hardware-based and virtual appliances in a single network, all managed using a single web-based management interface. With ShoreTel virtualization, customers can select the UC deployment model that best suits their business and infrastructure needs — virtual, physical or any combination of both. The benefits are immediate: reduced hardware and operational complexity, higher application availability, increased scalability and reliability. ShoreTel 14.2 is currently available from qualified ShoreTel reseller partners.